Hills for breakfast, hold the gnats

Recovery run on dead legs. 

Week summary: 

 Mon-Sun mileage total: 57.46

Mon 2.13

Tue 9.54 w/ hill repeats, 5 x 1:30 on 15% grade w/ 3 min recov

Wed 10.16

Thu 9.45 w/ tempo run, 3 x 15 min w/ 1:30 recov.

Fri off

Sat 23.16

Sun 3

48F, clear & starry. Another recovery run (legs still stiff and sore from Saturday).  15 min. core & upper body.

Doin' the old-lady shuffle again this morning. For some reason,  my left quad is more sore by far than my right.  I hate to think what that might mean.

I don't know how many people are familiar with Kevin Beck's rather odd website. It is odd but interesting!  Much of the oddness lies in the difficulty of navigating through all that he has to offer.  You cannot see it from the home page, but if you follow the right bread crumbs there is a nice motivational page I'd like to share, here.  

65F, clear and very windy.  Easy run, finished on the TM (ran out of time).  15 min. strength and stretching. 

It is nearly 20 degrees warmer this  morning than yesterday, some kind of freak heat wave is moving in.  The patio furniture is blowing all over the place and the house sounds like it does during our winter storms.  

There is a small group of women, some from my running club and some not, who are meeting during the week for some short runs.  I saw them this morning and joined them for a little while.  I couldn't quite keep up and chat at the same time, so I said goodbye after short time.  One of the women is someone I've seen running around the neighborhood for years (she is not in the club) so it was really nice to finally meet her.  She is from Quebec, one of my favorite places on earth.  Maybe when I am feeling a little faster I can join them again and practice my French.   

Freak heat wave continues. 70F at 5 AM. (Yuck.) Windy & overcast.  VO2 interval workout.  3 x 1600m w/ 4 min. recovery.  Target pace = ha ha ha (aka 7:55) Splits: 8:23, 8:11, 8:21.   15 minutes core & upper body strength. 

Unless I can find someone who wants to go to the track with me very early (perhaps someone from my club), my track days might be over for the 8-month dark season.  I had every intention of going today, but after a night of anxiety and very bad dreams, I changed my mind this morning.  I did it once in utter darkness 2 weeks ago, but perhaps the memory of what that was like hindered more than it helped.  The track itself is ok with my headlamp and the bit of streetlight.  The problem is: bathrooms.  I always seem to need one about 15 minutes into my warmup.  

I can either go to the super creepy, bush-surrounded park bathroom a half block away (where neither the outer door nor the stall door locks), or I can jog the half mile down to Centennial Park where the bathrooms are quite nice but surrounded by desolate woods and fields and the nearest inhabitants are the charming trailer park residents a quarter mile away. Not using a bathroom is, unfortunately, not one of my choices. 

It's a long explanation, but it's best to get it out of the way so I can stop thinking about it. I hate speed work but I also love it:  knowing what it is doing for me is enough to make it a friend. Now I just have to hope that Sean and Bonnie and all my other track heroes will forgive me.  ;) 

So, where did I do my 1600s?  Well, I thought about going around the Ridge-Kinsey loop (about a mile) where I've been doing my tempo workouts.   Then I remembered Crestview Loop, a small, circular development in a remote part of my neighborhood.  During my warmup I measured the loop at .4 of a mile.  It is almost flat, certainly flatter than the tempo run loop.  There are no stoplights or intersections, and during my entire workout I only encountered one car, easily avoided.  So that's my new "track" until the world gets lighter next spring -- unless of course I can find a track buddy.  "Hey! Who's up for driving down the hill at 4:50 AM? It'll be fun!"

Now, about my workout.  First rep: didn't quite feel warmed up, despite doing some strides at the end of my jog warm-up.  Second rep: started to feel more powerful, form felt good, split reflects better running. Third rep: falling apart now but holding on.  Still better than rep #1.  Legs feeling as miserable as the lungs - that's a first!   Overall performance... A for effort, P for pathetic pace, T for "taper is coming - it's going to be ok."

SnoFlake isn't feeling well so I sent her back to bed instead of running.  I am sure she'll be fit to come out again soon.  It's just as well she didn't have to run in this miserable heat.  

Mid 50s, clear w/ clouds moving in.  Easy pace run. 

So nice to have the cool air back.  Legs tired, pace slow.  

9 hours of sleep...mmmmm.  

Day off, but I just want to quickly promote the new issue of Running Times (November).   It's a particularly good one.  Highlights - Lydiard training concepts, Deena's review of her races this year in her own words (favorite quote: "Races are a lot like snowflakes; no two are alike."), and a great review of the Western States 100 race.  I put off reading "The Science of Aging;" those kinds of articles scare me.  Maybe someone else here can preview it for me and let me know if there is anything in it that could be paraphrased as "you are doomed." 

High 40s rising to mid 50s, partly cloudy with some light fog and mists. Very pretty morning. Objectives: endurance; club run in miles 4.3-9.7; Leg Builder Hill in miles 11.7-13.7; MP in miles 17-19.2, adding the .2 because I had to hit 'lap' and walk, twice. So, 2 miles in three "pieces," paces of which were 9:13, 9:18, 9:17. Target was 9:15.  Total running time 3:50, with 14 min walk-run warm up and same cool down. 

Sorry, this is going to be another whiney post.  But the alternative is to say almost nothing, wish everyone a happy weekend, and click "publish." I think on the whole I'd rather share...

A small part of me thinks this is just such an awesome workout because I had that big hill in the middle and still managed to get fairly close to my target pace on the MP miles.  

The other part of me looks at the totally exhausting effort level of the MP miles, the need to walk (twice! sheesh),  the prospect of holding that pace for over 4 hours, and the charley horse I got in my left calf after it was finished... and I just want to cry.  If my taper over the next two weeks doesn't leave me feeling like a million bucks I don't know how I will handle the lack of results after working so hard.  

But now I've done the training I set out to do. I may have fallen short on miles or pace but never on the time I put into my runs, the effort level, or my determination.  At the beginning of August I asked the blog at large for help choosing workouts that would make a 9:00-9:15 pace feel easier, and I followed every detail of the plan that Sean Sundwall gave me.  At this moment, I find myself wishing that a 10:00 pace felt easier! Is it even possible that my marathon fitness could be lower than it was in May? Lower than last December?  Oh please, taper, do your magic!